Archive for January, 2010

At my most recent book discussion, I tried something new. At the start of the meeting, I asked everyone to take a minute and think about the book (which was Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman) and prepare to share a brief comment beginning with “What I liked about the book was…” or “What I didn’t […]

Audiobooks as a physical format: dead or alive? BookScan reports a 19% drop in the purchase of audiobooks in 2009. A recent Publishers Weekly article by Jim Milliot showed that physical sales of audiobooks took a hard hit, while print format sales had only a mild drop in the poor economic climate. Was this a […]

What can someone who is only twenty five possibly have to say that is so significant they are encouraged to write a memoir? Perhaps it starts with the fact that Kevin Michael Connolly was born without legs. Then after discovering that leverage is needed to be a successful wrestler, he moved onto to hurtling his […]

Zoinks! I might be just a little bit crazy (but in a good way). I’ve been toiling since late November to build my annual aggregated compilation of last year’s best books. It’s not just the best according to one source, or even according to ten sources. So far, it’s the best according to 74 different authoritative […]

The death of J. D. Salinger (see Dan Kraus’ post on Likely Stories) has overshadowed the fact we lost another literary figure this week: Louis Auchincloss. Described in New York Magazine as “the last of the gentlemen novelists,” Auchincloss was an old-fashioned writer whose novels and stories depicted an increasingly arcane and antique-seeming world: that of […]

Cindy: At the end of each publishing year and after the announcement of YALSA’s BBYA list and the Printz, Newbery and other awards, we purge our temporary BBYA collection and give the advanced reader copies away to our hard working teen BBYA book club members as a reward for sharing their opinions and their enthusiasm […]

Literary deaths don’t get any bigger. J.D. Salinger, 91, died at his home on Wednesday, January 27, leaving behind one of the most mysterious and pervasive legacies of any great writer of the twentieth century. When John Updike passed, when David Foster Wallace died, word spread among the hallways pretty quickly at Booklist. But this […]

It’s that time again. The behemoth Edgar Nominations list has been released to the public. Hold on to your hats: Best Novel The Missing, by Tim Gautreaux The Odds, by Kathleen George The Last Child, by John Hart Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, by Charlie Huston Nemesis, by Jo Nesbø, translated, by […]

Advocate for audiobooks! Writers who love the spoken word are invited to lead their support of the audiobook publishing community. Here’s the details from the Audio Publishers Association: June is Audiobook Month: Author Advocate Initiative Tapping into the already broad pool of authors who love audiobooks, the APA Communications Committee is launching a widespread media […]

Lynn: Renowned author Paul Fleischman is a man on a mission. He wants teens to look beyond their own “internal movie,” beyond the dazzling technological changes in our world to the side effects and huge environmental problems we face. Using in-your-face, blunt language in Eyes Wide Open: Going Beyond the Environmental Headlines (2014), Fleischman sets about […]

Lynn: As an educator, a parent, and a grandparent, one of my goals has been to fan the flames of curiosity in kids. It’s a critical trait and one that often seems to get squashed somewhere along the K-12 march. I love books that encourage kids to ask questions. Marc Aronson’s books always seem to […]

Lynn and Cindy: While shapes are a common subject for picture books, it is still a pleasure to find new ones that are both fun and instructive for young readers. If it were left to us, we’d throw out all the boring textbooks for the primary grades and stock them with fabulous picture books. See—educational reform […]

Lynn: Renowned author Paul Fleischman is a man on a mission. He wants teens to look beyond their own “internal movie,” beyond the dazzling technological changes in our world to the side effects and huge environmental problems we face. Using in-your-face, blunt language in Eyes Wide Open: Going Beyond the Environmental Headlines (2014), Fleischman sets about […]

Lynn: As an educator, a parent, and a grandparent, one of my goals has been to fan the flames of curiosity in kids. It’s a critical trait and one that often seems to get squashed somewhere along the K-12 march. I love books that encourage kids to ask questions. Marc Aronson’s books always seem to […]

Lynn and Cindy: While shapes are a common subject for picture books, it is still a pleasure to find new ones that are both fun and instructive for young readers. If it were left to us, we’d throw out all the boring textbooks for the primary grades and stock them with fabulous picture books. See—educational reform […]